Surviving Westeros
by TheLordOfWinter
Summary: Well, if there's one thing I'm sure of, it was not wanting to be reincarnated in this murderfest of a TV show. Dragons, ice monsters, zombies, cannibals, mongols... Yeah, I'm not liking my new life. Male OC self insert. Rated M because this is in Westeros


**A/N: Hi, this is my first attempt at writing. Not sure how this will turn out, but hopefully I can make something good out of this. Please rate and review. **

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**PROLOGUE**

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I was never a religious person. I was what one may consider an agnostic atheist. As a result of this, I had great difficulty keeping myself calm in my current situation.

I had died, and I was terrified. I had lived a full 35 years of life and let me be the first to tell you that there is nothing like _death_. Not really. All the priests and religious scholars can babble all they want about afterlives and judgement, but it was all a load of bullshit. Nothing, and I mean _nothing_ can prepare you for it.

The endless void. A cold, dark abyss. Endless nothingness. Nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to feel. As if everything ceased to exist around me.

I didn't how long I was there for. I screamed out in fear, in anger, in agony. I screamed until I could scream no more. Screaming for anything, really. For help, for guidance, for something that wasn't nothing. When I realised no one was listening, I began to cry. 'I'm alone,' I thought. 'Alone and dead.'

It was weird for me. I couldn't remember the last time I let a tear escape my eye. I wasn't allowed to. Couldn't let my feelings betray me. Not when my parents died. Not when my younger brother Andrew was diagnosed with cancer. Not when the weight of the world seemed to be bearing down on my shoulders. Never. I couldn't show weakness. I was the older brother. I had to be strong, to be their shining light of hope.

Now look at me, bawling my eyes out. God, it felt weird. I wasn't used to this. Sadness and grief, I was accustomed to; they were a regular part of my life. But crying? That was something entirely foreign to me.

But was this not inevitable? I mean, death was always going to come. That was the one thing we as humans could be sure of in this world. From there, everything else was up for debate, but death was the only certainty we had. What was that line from Doctor Strange? "Death is what gives life meaning." I suppose that was true. If we never died, would we not get bored? We would constantly be in search of a new stimulus, something to rid ourselves of the boredom. I guess that's why gods are always at war with something in the stories. Or else they'd get horribly bored and off themselves. Either that or get depressed and either fuck or eat their way through it. Perhaps both. Who am I to judge immortal gods?

I had lived a good life, I won't lie. Even with mum and dad's death, I managed to get my siblings into uni without taking a loan, they had jobs, my sister Song even got married to someone from back in China. Mum would've loved it if she could ignore her parents berating her from running away from China, from her family, and marrying a white man in England. But you can't have everything I suppose.

Now that I think about it, there's an odd sense of _peace_ to death; knowing that nothing more can be done about your life, that your days are finished. Really clears up the mind. No more worries, no more stress, no more sadness and pain. It was just you. Alone. For what may well be until the end of time. Or a fraction of a second. I had long since lost the ability to keep track of the time.

After what felt like eternity, I saw a blinding white light in the distance and his surrounded suddenly began to constrict his movement, slowly crushing me. The greater the light became, the greater the pressure. Once the light's brightness completely covered my view, I was screaming out in pain, tears coming from my eyes again, eyes I had now shut because of the light's intensity.

I felt myself arrive _somewhere_. It was strange. From the first moment, my body felt too small; the limbs were too light and flimsy so when I tried to shield my eyes, I accidentally whacked my forehead. Man, that's weird. There was also this dull throbbing at the back of my head that seemed to consistently pound into the back of my skull like a sledgehammer.

Anyway, I slowly came to and as I opened my eyes, I found myself in a room in what appeared to be a castle. From a nearby window, I could see I was on an island of sorts, surrounded by desert and mountains. Looking down, my body was _way_ smaller than before. I remember having muscles and chest hair. Now I look like a child. 'Rebirth? Reincarnation? Transmigration? The fuck happened!? And where the fuck am I!?'

Cutting me out of my thoughts, a woman dressed as some sort of servant walked in holding a tray with what looked like water and a clean cloth. She looked at me and just froze up, the shock so clearly written on her face. She then dropped the tray onto the floor and ran out, screaming "Lady Ashara!"

'Ashara? That sounds familiar. Where do I remember hearing that? Oh yeah. She was that character in A Song of Ice and Fire, right? Ashara Dayne, and her older brother was the Sword of the Morning.'

All of a sudden, I felt a piercing pain in the centre of my forehead like a red hot sword being down by the river, of running through the castle, pranking all the guards, of all the things a child would normally get up to. Centred around all of them was a single person called Ashara Dayne, Lady of Starfall. She was my mother. Nothing told me that, but I just _felt_ it. Deep inside, I felt a kinship with her. One that wasn't too dissimilar to what I had with my previous parents.

'Memories. These visions were _memories_. This is my life now. But, that means I'm in Westeros...FUCK! Fuckfuckfuckittyfuckfuck! Whywhywhywhy! Why Westeros! Couldn't I be in My Little Pony or something? A place where the sun is shining, the birds are singing and nothing traumatising happens. But _noooo_, through some sick, twisted mockery of some sort, I'm in fucking _Westeros_, where everyone who isn't lying, stealing and backstabbing everyone else is lied to, robbed and backstabbed. A place where a single mistake means you get your throat slit in your bed, your home set on fire and the women in your family raped. A world where there are immortal necromancer ice demons trying to kill everyone and turn them into their undead thralls from the north and an army of horse-riding barbarians and dragons from the east that will rape, pillage, murder and burn their way through the continent.

'Hold on a second. If Ashara Dayne is my mother, who the fuck is my dad? How the fuck am I here? Ashara Dayne was never meant to have a living child! What the actual _fuck_ is going on here!? I mean, there were theories that Ashara had Brandon Stark's bastard but, they were supposed to come out either stillborn or be taken in by Ned Stark from birth. So _who the fuck am I_.

'All I can get from my memories is that my name's Theon, I'm not a bastard and my dad was someone important. This was worrying because at no point in the original plot was Ashara Dayne meant to have married someone. That means that there are changes in the world and if the Butterfly Effect was anything to go by, bad shit is going to happen because of it.

'Now that I think about it, if I'm not a bastard and my mother is Ashara Dayne, my family name couldn't possibly be Dayne as well. But never did anyone mention what my family name actually was. This must mean that they are hiding who my father is. Why? What's the deal with my father?'

Before I could continue, a woman who my memories told me was my mother came rushing into the room. Her black hair was a mess and her eyes were puffy and red. I realised she had been crying, but I didn't know why. She just stood there in the doorway, a look of shock on her face, which quickly broke out in tears.

"Theon, you're awake!"

She came running to my side and hugged me tightly, as if fearing I would disappear. Her tears dampened my tunic as she sobbed into my shoulder, letting out all her frustrations, repeatedly muttering how she thought she almost lost me. 'The fuck happened?'

I gently rubbed her back, whispering how I was okay into her ear and letting her know that everything was alright. This calmed her down somewhat but did nothing to soothe the underlying fright and worry she so clearly expressed. She got up and stared me in the eyes, as if looking for something inside them.

"Theon, you cannot climb again, do you understand? I-I don't want to lose you."  
"I promise. No more climbing." 'What the fuck is she talking about?'

She seemed content at that, smiling through her tears. Would now be a good time to ask?

"Mother, who's my father?"

Her face paled and her smile vanished from it. She seemed to freeze up, a look of uncertainty appearing in her eyes.

"Are you sure you want to know? You will always be a Dayne, my son. Why must you want to know who your father is?" she said, almost pleading as she did.

"I've been thinking, mother. I need to know who I am. I need to know what my place in the world is."

"Oh, sweetie." She placed a hand on my cheek and began to slowly stroke it. "If that's what you want, then I can't refuse you."

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Okay, this is fucked up.

Why? My dad is Brandon Stark. Brandon. _Fucking_. Stark. The Wild Wolf. The heir to Winterfell. Future Warden and Lord Paramount of The North. Prolific womaniser. Known warrior. Overall badass. Up there with Ser Blackfish and good ol' Bobby B himself.

So why is it a bad thing that he's my dad? 1 main reason: I'm tied down to The North and to House Stark as Lord of Winterfell and the head honcho of the Stark family. I'll be forced to deal with the Greyjoy Rebellion, the 100,000 strong wildling force from beyond The Wall, the Lannisters, a possible War of the Five Kings, Daenerys' invasion, a possible Targaryen/Blackfyre invasion if Aegon exists and the White Walkers with their army of the dead. Why couldn't my dad be some nobody lord from somewhere in Dorne. At least that way I have fewer problems to deal with. Instead, I have every fucking problem this side of the Narrow Sea coming full speed into my face.

I am now lord of, or will be once my new dad kicks the bucket, one of the most desolate, coldest and poorest kingdoms in Westeros. I have no navy, my only southern entrance point is in ruins, there are no castles on my western shores to defend against the Ironborn and the West, I have an island of cannibal wildlings to my east, entrance to my only major city threatened by the Three Sisters and no barriers in both The Gift and The New Gift to halt wildling raiders. The Night's Watch is fucking useless, the population I will rule over will be greatly reduced because of Bobby B's rebellion and I will definitely have a strained relationship with the Riverlands because uncle Ned will be too honourable to remove me from my place, making Hoster Tully's plan with Lady Catelyn useless.

Basically, everyone is my enemy, I have no defences and I'm the first in line to face the apocalypse. No pressure.

Just the thought of everything that is going to happen makes the world feel like it's going to collapse on top of me. I hold my head in my hands, feeling despair well up inside me. I'm _so_ fucked.

No. No, I'm not fucked. Where there's a will, there's a way. I need information. Ideas. Plans. Action. I know I'm in Starfall, Dorne. Since I haven't heard anything about it, Robert's Rebellion hasn't started yet. That gives me at least another year of peace and quiet to formulate plans and ideas. For me to live past the second Long Night, there are a few things I must accomplish.

1) I must kill Roose Bolton and Ramsay Snow, possibly Domeric Bolton if necessary. I cannot allow the Leech Lord any chance to put me in a Red Wedding scenario. It would also rid me of my only opposition in The North, securing my rule and making it easier for me to enact any changes if the need arises. It would be difficult to kill him in normal times, but Balon Greyjoy allows me the perfect place to kill him without anyone knowing it was me. I can have Ramsay executed for all his obvious crimes, the guy's a bloody psychopath with a trail of flayed men and raped girls. Domeric would be difficult to get rid of, but maybe I could set Ramsay against him. Should Ramsay kill him after Roose dies in the Greyjoy Rebellion, I execute Ramsay and House Bolton would then be extinct. Perfect plan.

2) I need to build and rebuild castles in strategic places. Moat Cailin must be rebuilt and strengthened, I need a castle on Sea Dragon Point ot the Stony Shore, I need to take and rebuild the New Gift and I need to take and develop Skagos. North, South, East and West would be properly defended, leaving only the Three Sisters as a viable geographic threat to the North only because it may restrict access to White Harbour.

3) I need to increase food production, but with the Northern climate, I need to either find a very resilient food that can grow in its tough conditions (must find potatoes) or figure out a way to make the Northern soil more fertile.

4) As point 3 comes along, I'll need to increase military strength to defend against enemies. The Ironborn, the Skaagosi, the Lannisters, the Baratheons, the Targaryens, the Wildlings and the White Walkers are all threats that I will need to deal with.

5) The most vital thing that I will need for everything mention above will be a method to generate as much revenue as possible. I'm going to have to squeeze my mind for everything I know and find a way to gain as much gold as Tywin Lannister shits in his sleep if I'm to do ANY of these things. The North is too poor at the moment to afford even one of these points bar the extinction of House Bolton.

6) I need to see if my dad had any bastard sons along the way. When the Rebellion is over and done with, the only members of House Stark apart from me would be Ned and Benjen, the latter of whom may be an idiot and join the Night's Watch out of a possible feeling of tremendous guilt from what happened to Lyanna. If I am to ensure my own dominance, I will need as many loyal family members as possible by my side. It would also be useful in setting up cadet branches, ensuring that power is centralised and in House Stark's control.

'Wow, I really have my work cut out for me.'

Putting all of that aside, there was a more important matter for me to consider. What the heck did my new mum mean when she said she didn't want me climbing anymore? Did I fall when I was climbing and hit my head? Is that how I got into this world?

Man, I'm lacking information.

Guess I know where I need to start.


End file.
